Drug Discovery 2016 #ELRIGDD16

Conference Directors Del Trezise (Essen Biosciences), Rachel Grimley (AstraZeneca) and Chas Bountra (SGC, Oxford University) are pleased to announce the 10th Anniversary celebration of Drug Discovery which will be held this year in Liverpool at the Echo Arena. Once again, this meeting will bring together the leading lights in drug discovery research across pharma, biotech, academia and the vendor community.

The meeting will feature over 50 world-class speakers in 6 main session tracks, each highlighting the latest scientific breakthroughs and new approaches that are driving this success. This conference will explore innovative technologies and approaches that can be used to overcome drug development challenges, and bring together industry leaders who will discuss future opportunities for novel therapeutic discovery. Scientific tracks will cover therapeutic areas, innovative technologies and target progression challenges. New to this year, we also introduce a track where ground breaking developments in the use of cells as biological tools and therapeutics will be discussed.

Another exciting addition to our conference this year is a series of Core Technologies Workshops & Vendor Tutorials. These will provide a more informal, interactive environment for you to discuss key issues and future directions in workshops coordinated by leaders in the fields. ELRIG Drug Discovery 2016 will include a high quality scientific poster session, networking opportunities, and an extensive vendor exhibition featuring around 100 companies.

And don’t miss the Innovation Zone, for new and exciting emerging companies and technologies.

Sessions

Agenda

Scientific Committee

Exhibitors

For Speakers

For Poster Presenters

Innovation Zone

Sessions

Advances in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology continue to drive innovation in drug discovery, unlocking new modes of action and the potential to address ‘undruggable’ targets. This session will focus on the increasingly recognised ability of small molecules to rewire biomolecular interactions through exploitation of unconventional binding modes, and remarkable recent progress in manipulating key pathways through multi-protein and nucleic acid complexes. Case studies range from cutting edge and disruptive concepts, through to novel approaches that have delivered candidates to the clinic.

Towards the end of the 19th century, evidence had emerged pointing to the role of the immune system in combating cancers. Coleys toxin carried the tentative promise of long term anti-tumor responses through stimulating the immune system. During the 20th century, key advances were made in the discovery and characterisation of cellular and molecular players involved in immune recognition of cancer cells. These discoveries led to the recent wave of immunotherapeutic agents, T cell checkpoint blockers, with demonstrable durable anti-tumor activity, initially in melanoma, and expanding to other indications.

There are now a plethora of immunotherapeutic modalities in clinical development; these are being tested as single agents and in combination. This track will review the various modalities showing promise, including protein based biologics and cell therapies, as well as surveying the tumor landscape for opportunities to disrupt the tumor micro environment.

The high rate of failure of drug discovery due to lack of efficacy or undesirable safety, demands the development of improved screening assays and translational models. In both instances, increasing the ‘predictive power’ of these approaches may lead to more effective delivery of medicines to patients. This session will focus on innovative approaches to increase the biological value of plate based screens and translational models aiming to drive the success of drug discovery efforts.

In Drug Discovery there is an ever-increasing emphasis on the ability to identify high quality hits. This has resulted in the search for new assays and screening paradigms. Technologies already established later in the discovery cascade, such as CETSA and Mass Spec are being applied in earlier in the value chain to deliver new chemical starting points, and the resurgence of interest in phenotypic screening is starting to deliver in terms of hits and novel targets. This session will explore innovative approaches with established and novel platforms using case studies to demonstrate successful applications.

As the Cell and Gene therapy field progresses from R&D to commercial reality, the focus increases on manufacturing challenges including scale up and rapid analytics. Our speakers will present how they are using the best of the Biologics technologies with innovative approaches to drive increased process reliability and reduce the cost of goods. Critical to this is the understanding of the efficacy of highly complex therapeutic products. Cell-based assays are in demand to monitor the efficacy of a gene, protein or cell therapy as a companion diagnostic or tool for quality control in batch release testing. We’ll hear how the sustained reproducibility required for GMP assays can be achieved even with a fickle player like a cell.

We are entering into a new era for target identification and validation, where genomics and proteomics are meeting head-on to reveal the real complexity of life. The advent of next generation sequencing technologies has enabled a wealth of functional genomics studies such as ENCODE and BLUEPRINT. Reinterpretation of the wealth of genetics data generated over the last decade is now starting to identify many new targets at both general and individual therapeutic levels, and an explosion in transcriptomic and proteomic information has created a wealth of additional information.

In parallel, our ability to build more complex in-vitro and ex-vivo cell/tissue systems is enabling us to explore and validate these targets in systems that are ever-more representative of (patho) physiological niches where they operate. Critically, the development of CRISPR and TALENs technologies promises the ability to edit target genes for precise ‘gold-standard’ chemical biology target validation at scale and across species, from bacteria to humans. These complex (and costly) technologies are generating new types and scales of data, which will have the effect of creating more and more target identification and validation work. To support this need, new working models are developing, with industry and academia working together in this pre-competitive space. In this session you will hear examples of how this new era is helping to drive high quality target identification and validation.

For Poster Presenters

Poster presentations at Drug Discovery are an excellent opportunity for delegates to network with their colleagues and communicate about their research. To be considered for a poster presentation, you must first submit an abstract for review by the meeting’s Scientific Program Committee.

For those wishing to participate, a subset of abstracts will also be considered for a short, poster taster session involving a 10 minute oral presentation within the main Symposia sessions. Decisions regarding acceptance of poster abstracts and/or selection for Poster Tasters will be communicated via e-mail in mid-September.

We apologise that we are unable to accommodate posters which are any larger than A0 Portrait

Posters from Exhibiting Companies:
As an exhibitor, you have one poster spot included with your stand package.
Additional poster spots are £250 +VAT each.

Posters from Non-Exhibiting Companies:
Non-exhibiting vendor companies will be charged £250 +VAT for each poster submitted.

Innovation Zone

The Innovation Zone at ELRIG Drug Discovery 2016 gives up-and-coming companies, who cannot afford a full stand, access to a major event and exposure to the market. We get a more diverse, more interesting show, and we fulfil part of our mission to encourage new business and new technology. We are happy to consider research and non-commercial groups as well as individuals hoping to start a business.

How much does it cost?

ELRIG subsidise this substantially, and ask you for a contribution of 10% of a full price stand. For Drug Discovery 2016, this will be £325 + VAT.

For full details about application and qualification for the Innovation Zone, click here